My indelible image is of Wickenheiser yanking out floorboards with a crowbar, dirt caked on her freckled arms and a star forward’s determination in her eyes.

I met Wickenheiser the weekend after floodwaters receded. Check that. We never properly met.

I had just spent a long week anchoring the Herald’s flood live blog. Midweek, one reader urged me to “throw on some grubbies and help people out.” Not a bad idea, Pat Walsh. That Saturday, my first day off, I threw on some grubbies and biked to the Safeway in Misson.

I found a busy scene, and 60 people queued for volunteer registration. Through a mix of impatience and reckoning there were enough people at today’s Mission: Possible, I checked Twitter — where Wickenheiser had spent the week leaning on the public to supply Shopvacs, gloves or other supplies for home recovery scenes where she was volunteering.

Brian Pincott, councillor for Elbow Park, had tweeted there was plenty of work to do that day in East Elbow Park. I got there, and found so much work I didn’t know where scrawny me should start. I joined a small group of 20something women walking to Edison Crescent, talking about where a friend — “Wick” — and her mom were working. We found extra work gloves and dust masks in somebody’s truck, and got to it.

On Edison Crescent, homes across the street from the Elbow had to clear out the entire main floor, not just the basement. Along with this clutch of fit young women, we pulled mud-soaked DVD racks and firewood out from a stranger’s backyard. Then we moved next door, grabbed hammers, and smashed the kitchen tiles dow to subfloor. (An amazing stress reliever.)

No small talk. No introductory handshakes or name exchanges. No time. A neighbourhood full of tasks lay ahead. This “Wick” person apparently needed our help at the next house on the block. I had no idea who this leader was, but thought better than to waste time with questions. I was with strangers, helping strangers, a stranger myself. Which was less distracting than if I had introduced myself as a newspaper reporter, and we had started talking about flood stories. I wasn’t a reporter that afternoon.

The walls were already stripped to studs. A crew of men and women from around Calgary were pulling out the floorboards on the whole main level. I was gathered uprooted boards for the rubbish pile out front, used a shovel to remove the underlay, and occasionally kept the upright piano away from the melee.

Several of the others took turns with the crowbar and hardwood planks,to varying degrees of success. Things moved fastest when one woman led the charge — slightly older than the others, blond hair, muscular arms, a grey heather University of Calgary Dinos T-shirt. Tough. A small-town Saskatchewan farm girl, I overheard someone say.

On our trips to the dump bins, we would stop for water bottles, or apples and junk food others had carted over to volunteers. Some of the girls talked about getting back to campus for practice. Hmm, guess that explains the athletic shape they’re in. An empty Hockey Canada truck rolled down the crescent, so we could load in the floor boards and other household possessions-turned trash. Hmm, somebody might have connections — perhaps that guy with the full respirator mask and a Slavic accent.

It still took hours to connect dots. My journalistic curiosity was resting on this Sabbath.

During one break, two girls who worked promotions for a beer company drove by, handing everyone free cans. We stood in a circle, clinked our Molson Canadians, toasted to the great city of Calgary.

After a few more references to this Dinos T-shirt woman as “Wick,” the dots and lines finally formed a picture for me. Our ad-hoc volunteer crew captain was also Team Canada’s captain. Crowbar or hockey stick, Wick knew how to snap it to the floor and make quick magic.

I figure she and I never paused to shake hands for largely the same reason.

Hayley Wickenheiser didn’t want to make a scene out of the fact she was helping out, unlike some other quasi-celebrities who wanted to ensure photo ops. This Herald journo didn’t want to make a scene and be expected to tweet anything, or to be solicited for stories that day. She and I, and the others that day, just wanted to help with what time we had.

It’s this memory of the great Hayley Wickenheiser, tireless and anonymous-ish flood volunteer coordinator, that I’ll be thinking of when she leads Canada’s Olympians into Fisht Olympic Stadium next month, a giant Maple Leaf overhead.

There are likely dozens of Calgary flood volunteers and recovering homeowners who probably recognize her the same way.

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